This blog consists of PhotoFeature Stories on artists of all genres, human interest stories, guest blog posts, book reviews, and book excerpts.
CHRIS RICE COOPER is a newspaper writer, feature stories writer, poet, fiction writer, photographer, and painter.
She has a Bachelor's in Criminal Justice and is close to completing her Master's in Creative Writing.
She, her husband Wayne, sons Nicholas and Caleb, cats Nation and Alaska reside in the St. Louis area.

This past May 12, 2015,
would have been Katherine Hepburn’s 108th birthday.The feminist from Connecticut had an
outstanding acting career:she was
nominated 12 times for the Oscar; won 4 Oscars; one Emmy; two Tony Awards; and 8
Golden Globes.In 1999, when she was 92
years old, the American Film Institute ranked Katherine Hepburn as the greatest
female film star in cinema history.She
died in her home in Connecticut on June 29, 2003, at the age of 96.

Steel Eggs

by Christal Rice
Cooper

I
told Miss Barbara Walters I like to think of myself as a tree.

She
asked, “What tree would you be?”

I
said an oak,

Breathing
in the green air of life.

I
have not lived as a woman but like a man.

As
a child I wanted to be called Jimmy

As
a woman I am Mister

And
dread wearing uncomfortable dresses.

I
prefer tailored suits of men.

Trousers
are for women proud to work.

My
habit of dress shocked

Mother’s
Catholic friends, but

I
enjoyed the look on their faces

When
they learned of my divorce

I
laughed when I heard the eggshells crunch.

With
Howard

The
press said I was diamonds fizzing in pink champagne.

But
I prefer clumps of gold soaking in whisky.

And
I could drink my share-

Holding
the bottle in one hand, a cigarette in the other.

Who
needs a gun?My tongue’s

Sharper
than the whip that scourged Christ.

Maybe
that’s why they describe my voice as corncrake.

Though
I’m no damn bird, but hey,

I
intimidated Mr. Fonda himself.

But
not my Spence, my Mister Tracy,

My
good value baked potato

I
enjoyed him six days out of the week

Sundays
he went to mass with Mrs. Tracy and their children.

He
was my equal, his eyes clear

Magnifying
to obsidian pools of light through his glasses-

Glasses
only he could wear.

He
was my intimate stranger, never

Said
he loved me.

But
our years together planted my deepest roots.

Some
say I’m a temperamental woman

Feisty
– even Spence said I was a snake.

I
can have my cake and eat it too

I
am the stallion brewing vapors of hot and cold in one Yankee breath.

REMEMBER FLORIDA I’d scrawled in my notebook,
drawing a heart beneath the words. I
ripped the page out and stuck it in his textbook when no one was looking.

I think we both realize that the chance
of us moving to Florida together at this point is slim.I’ve decided to go to college to become a
social worker and David wants to become an actor and work on TV.

But I wrote REMEMBER FLORIDA anyway,
because for years, it’s what we’ve done when things get tough.Anyway, Florida, is not a place, it’s a
concept.It’s freedom and happiness and
being in control of your own life.Remember Florida:Remember there’s
a better place than this.

Excerpt
from Jesus
Land

Copyright
granted by Julia Scheeres

In August of 1987, Julia Scheeres had
just attended her brother David’s funeral and was going through his belongings
when she discovered a green notebook full of notes, a book David planned to
write:a book that Julia would later write
and become a bestseller eighteen years later.

“I
wrote Jesus Land in an effort to
preserve his memory and the memory of the life we shared together. From the
time he was adopted at age three until he died in a car crash at age 20, we
were in constant contact.I was the person who knew him best, and it's
my job to keep telling people about what a quirky, tragic and beautiful soul he
was.”

Jesus Land is a memoir and the
first book written by San Francisco Writers Grotto faculty member Julia Scheeres,
about her and David’s experiences of intense racism, child abuse at home, and
severe abuse at Escuela Carib, a Christian reform school for troubled teens in the
Dominican Republic.

Julia and David were better described as
twins – the same age, kindred spirits constantly at the hip ready to defend the
other, and having a connection that could not be explained and never be
defeated.

The only differences these two had were all due
to DNA – Julia was white and a girl; David black and a boy; and each had
different biological parents.

Jesus Land starts out in 1983, David
and Julia, both 16, are on a bike riding adventure in the hot steamy summer of
Lafayette, Indiana, a predominately white, conservative, Bible belt community
that reeked of racism.

“That darky your boyfriend?” one of them asks to a burst of snickers. I pull my bike upright and wheel it forward
so David can get his.

“No, he’s my brother.”

They crowd around us.

“What, your momma git knocked up by some Detroit
nigger?”

There’s a shuffle of dirty laughter ant he leans
forward, his pimpled jaw working up and down.He hawks a glob of chew into the dirt, narrowly missing David’s
sneakers.I glare at him and he throws
his shoulders back and grins proudly, a string of spittle stretching from his
pink face to the dust.David
contemplates the lump of brown slime at his feet with knitted eyebrows, as if
it were the saddest thing he’d ever seen.Don’t freeze up on me.Don’t!

“Let’s go,” I order David, elbowing him in the
ribs.

“Yea, you’d best skedaddle,” the tall one says.

As we mount our bikes, they watch with crossed
arms and slit eyes.We’ve got enough
fear ricocheting through us to propel ourselves all the way home without
stopping.

Excerpt
from Jesus
Land

Copyright
granted by Julia Scheeres.

They eventually ride their bikes back
home, a sprawling three-story ranch house on 180 Sumac Drive. Home is supposed to be a safe haven, but,
instead, it is an abusive environment:Julia is repeatedly raped by adoptive brother Jerome; and both Julia and
David are physically, emotionally, and verbally abused by their parents.

Their father is a surgeon who spends most of his
life on the job and when he gets home only speaks with two things:a belt, inflicting deep scars beneath thick
skin, and a fist plummeting into his sons’ stomachs.

Their mother is a former nurse obsessed
with the spreading of the Gospel:writing
letters to missionaries, attending church, attending organizations that benefit
the spreading of gospel, reading Christianity
Today, and praying.These obsessions
are all consuming and fanatical, leaving no room for her to acknowledge her
children.

She’s got missionaries around the globe. Sends letters and packages, birthday cards,
chewing gum, $20 bills. Pins their
photos to the bulletin board over her desk.
White couples, posing with mud huts and dark children, their locations
jotted on the back of each picture:
“Loving the Lord in Laos.” “Coming
to Christ in Columbia.” “Giving God to
Ghana.” It all sounds so vaguely
pornographic to me, although I know they’re working hard to save souls.

She and Dad go on medical mission trips from
which she returns giddy with enthusiasm.They make us sit through slide shows that document their god squad
adventures.Look at this football-sized
tumor.Here’s a gangrenous spear
wound.We brought these loin-clothed
pagans to Jesus, healing bodies and souls at the same time.

“Such gratitude for Christ, such a hankering for
the Word!”Mother will gasp, shaking her
head at the wonder of it.

Sometimes they show movies about missionary
martyrs after Vespers, projecting the film onto the back of the church while we
sit in folding chairs in the parking lot, drinking Kool-Aid.Mother holds these people in high
esteem.Says she would have been a
missionary herself if it weren’t for meeting our father.

I used to wish she’d show the same enthusiasm
for us, pin our family photographs to her bulletin board.When I was in third grade, I poked all her missionaries’
eyes out with a thumbtack in a fit of jealousy.She paddled me for it.

Excerpt
from Jesus
Land

Copyright
granted by Julia Scheeres.

Despite the father being a surgeon, most
of the income goes toward other missionaries, spreading the gospel, and the
father’s pricey Porsche, which means the family has to make sacrifices: no air
conditioning during the sweltering summer months, no clothes shopping, and no
home cooked meals at the dinner table; instead David and Julia eat what some
would call staple food, food usually eaten by the poor during the Depression.

Garbage Soup is Mother’s name for it, not
ours. She makes it from old vegetables
and plate-scrapings – flaccid celery and carrot sticks, chicken bones, potato
skins, cheese rinds – that she collects in a mayonnaise jar and freezes. When the jar is full, she stews the contents
in salted water for two hours, strains the broth, adds hamburger, and la viola,
Garbage Soup! She says it’s loaded with
vitamins, one of the most nutritious meals ever. But it tastes just like its name, sour and
dirty and old. It’s summertime, the air
con is off to save energy; and I’m damp with sweat, but the mayo jar was full,
so it’s Garbage Soup for supper. Waste
not, want not.

Excerpt
from Jesus
Land

Copyright
granted by Julia Scheeres

Punishment for any form of behavior or opinions
that did not coincide with the parent’s view was met with physical abuse from
the father and emotional and verbal abuse from the mother.

In addition the entire house is wired with an
intercom system in every room of the three-story ranch home: where the only
thing heard is the Rejoice Radio, which begins at 8 a.m. until bedtime.But there are more sinister uses for the
intercom system:

The intercom has another important function: spying.
Control panels in the kitchen and master bedroom have a black switch
that can be flipped to “listen” or to “talk.”
You can tell when Mother’s eavesdropping because the speakers crackle,
but we can’t turn the volume down or off because we get in trouble if we don’t
hear her call us.

Excerpt from Jesus Land

Copyright
granted by Julia Scheeres

Soon Julia finds an outlet and an escape –
through drinking alcohol that she hides in a mayonnaise jar in a box in her
closet; and sneaking her boyfriend into her bedroom where they have sex.

David has one dream – for the family to be like
the Brady Bunch; the oldest three children Daniel, Deb, and Lauren are away at
college; but then Jerome is sent to a juvenile detention center, and he is
loosing hope of his dream coming true.Things worsen when, during the first part of December, his father beats
him with a 2x4 resulting in a broken arm.

“Are you okay?” I ask, although it’s obvious that he’s
not. “Do you want some water or
something?”

He begins to murmur.

“So sick of it, sick of all of it.”

My heart contracts.He’s giving up, and we’re almost there.

“Don’t do this now,” I say.“A year and a half and we’re eighteen.Remember Florida!”

Excerpt
from Jesus
Land

Copyright
granted by Julia Scheeres

Their greatest message to one another was two
words:Remember Florida.Julia and
David had a dream – upon the age of 18 escaping Jesus Land and their
abusive parents, and moving to Florida.Julia would earn a living making jewelry out of seashells and selling it
on the beach; and David would earn his living by deep-sea fishing.They both would spend their non-working hours
at the white beach, without being attacked because of David’s skin color or
being abused by their parents.While at
those white beaches they would simply listen to the blue waves make its own
music, and they would live happily ever after.

But for David that Christmas of 1983 he reached
a point where Remember Florida no
longer gave him hope and he attempted suicide by repeatedly slashing his wrist
and arm with a razor from a wall-mounted pencil sharpener.Julia finds him and in a panic goes to their
mother.

“He cut
his wrist!” I yell, cupping my hands
around my mouth as if she were a mile away.
She exhales, exasperated.

“Why can’t I just have one day of peace?”she grumbles, handing me the spatula.

She walks downstairs braying his name.

“A White Christmas, just what everyone
wanted!”the bleached blond TV reporter
says.I push the pink and white paste
around the skillet and wonder if I should call an ambulance or if Mother will
take him to the hospital herself.

Next thing, she’s beside me, snatching the
spatula from my hand.

“It’s burning!”

I wipe my hand on my jeans to erase her touch
and watch her spoon four craters in the hash and crack an egg into each
one.She says nothing.

“Well, are you taking him to the hospital?”I ask.

She snorts and jerks the saltshaker over the
skillet.

“They’re just surface cuts,” she says.“If you want to kill yourself, you slice down,
not sideways.”

She illustrates with her index finger before
bending to pull a metal lid from the tangle of pans in the cupboard below the
counter.

“But doesn’t he need . . .”

“He’s just trying to get attention.Ignore him.”

She drops the lid on the skillet and turns to
open the refrigerator.

Excerpt
from Jesus
Land

Copyright
granted by Julia Scheeres

On January 2, 1984 David is sent to the
Dominican Republic where he attends Escuela Carib, a reform school for
delinquent teenagers governed by New Horizons Youth Ministries, Inc.

In the spring of 1984 her mother reads
her diary and Julia is afraid her father may be aware of her sexual rendezvous
with her boyfriend Scott.Julia runs
away from home and moves in with her brother Dan and his three roommates at
Purdue.She finds a job as a busgirl at
the Howard Johnson’s Hotel, and, for the first time, Julia experiences
independence, peace, and happiness until, weeks later, her mother calls her on
the telephone.

“You killed my baby,” she kept
repeating. It took me a while to figure
out that her “baby” was our dog, Lecka.
I had unchained her the previous night and taken her to Scott’s house to
play with her, but she ran away before I could take her back, and sometime
during the night, she was run over in front of his driveway. His father had called Mother with the news.

“I loved that dog,” my mother wailed on the
phone.“And you killed her.”

I hung up the phone on her and snapped.It wasn’t just being responsible for Lecka’s
dying that set me off.It was my mother
calling Lecka her “baby,” and saying she loved her, and it was the emotion in
her voice.It was my mother – who had
never in my seventeen years told me that she loved me – getting all lathered up
over the dog.

Excerpt
from Jesus
Land

Copyright
granted by Julia Scheeres.

Hours after the conversation with her
mother, Julia is arrested for entering an unlocked car and breaking curfew – it
was past midnight and she was a minor.Her
father comes to the police station to pick her up but she chooses to stay in
jail instead of go home with him.She
stays in jail for five days.Eventually
Julia is faced with three choices – go back home with her abusive parents, be
declared an emancipated minor, or join David at Escuela Caribe.Julia, thinking it would be a happy reunion with
David, chooses Escuela Caribe, unaware of the horrors that await her there.

“What is this place?”I asked, squinting across the table at him in
the high tropical light.

He pushes his glasses up his nose.

“What do you mean?”

“How come you never told me what it was really
like?”As I talk, my anger swells.“Do you know I had to get special permission
to talk to you just now?And after this,
that fat lady says we can’t communicate?”

“Shh!”He
presses a finger to his lips and glances around, a deep crease etched into his
forehead.

“Well?”I
ask, glancing at my watch.“We’ve only
got, like, eight minutes left.” He leans forward. “I couldn’t tell you – they read the mail,” he says in a low
rush.“If you write anything negative
about The Program, they dock your points and throw away the letter.”

Each “student” is required to ask permission
before he or she can move, sit, stand, eat, or communicate with other members
of the opposite sex. All incoming and
outgoing mail is scrutinized for any negativity about the school.If any negativity is detected the mail is
destroyed before it reaches the addressee.

It was at the school that Julia and David felt
total abandonment, but they held on to one another, and even though talking was
not allowed they found their own way of communicating:a stare meant “Are you okay?’’ and the shake
of the head or a nod meant “not good”, and the one message they never stopped
sending to one another:Remember Florida.

I just have to playact, same as David and I did
as little kids in the basement with our dress-up clothes. He’d pretend to be a Texas cowboy, and I’d
pretend to be an evil witch. Now we just
have to playact the part of repentant teenagers.

When I get out, I’ll go live with Deb and find
another job as a busgirl.I’ll save
money to buy a junker and drive down to Florida, where I’ll rent an apartment
on the sand and wait for David to join me.Unless, of course, he gets out first, in which case I’d join him.

I imagine the two of us living in our beach
apartment, dunking each other in the warm waves and going for long bike rides
on the boardwalk.We’ll be fine after all, David, we will.

Excerpt
from Jesus
Land

Copyright
granted by Julia Scheeres.

They also found the ability to pretend that they
were being submissive to the school’s philosophy, which included Julia
confessing to being a whore, an alcoholic, and the cause of her parents’
misery.They are both on their way to
reach Level 5 that would enable them to leave the school for good; but until
then Julia is dealt another horror.

The Pastor gets up to close it, then perches on
the desk in front of me.

“I once knew a girl like you, a real smart
aleck,” he says.“Only fifteen years
old, and already a whore, fornicating left and right.Her daddy was dead, so her mother called me
for help.Would you like to know what I
did to her?”

He bores into me with his steel gray eyes and I
want to shake my head “no,” but know he’ll tell me anyway.I look at the bug, at the felt banner over
the desk.I am the Potter and You are the Clay.If I look at him, something bad will
happen.If you stare down a growling
dog, it will bite you.

The Pastor leans forward until his face is a few
inches form mine, blocking out the rest of the room.His breath smells of boiled cabbage.I stare at the stubble on his chin.Some of it white, some of it gray.

“I took that little whore, and I striped her
naked and I beat her black and blue,” The Pastor says, his voice a hoarse
whisper.“Beat the Devil right out of
her.And believe you me, I would not
hesitate to do it again.”

Excerpt
from Jesus
Land

Copyright
granted by Julia Scheeres

David and Julia have earned enough points
to be free from the school and on their last day in the Dominican Republic they
finally are able to Remember Florida.

A marshy breeze blows over us and ruffles
the mopheads of the palm trees arched over the shoreline. The fishing boats are trailing out of the bay
to the open sea, and the gulls now soar in lazy circles over us.

“It’s like Florida,” David says, taking it all
in.

“Better,” I say.

He takes a corner of his towel and wipes his
gleaming forehead.

“Remember how we were going to move down there?”
he asks.

“Yea.We
talked about it for years.”

“Guess this is as close as we’ll get,” he says,
sighing.

I watch a wave rear up celery green and collapse
shhhhhhh onto the sand before turning to him.

“Let’s pretend this is our Florida.Today.”

He crosses his arms in front of him on the towel
and rests his chin on them, smiling.

“Okay,” he says, closing his eyes.

“Let’s pretend that everything turns out
fine.We’re living on the beach and
we’re happy.”

“I am happy right now, “ he says.“I only wish it would stay like this.”

“Shh,” I reply, seeing his forehead crease.“We’re fine.”

Excerpt
from Jesus
Land

Copyright
granted by Julia Scheeres

The twins never return to the three-story
ranch style home to live, only to visit; instead Julia is sent to Portugal to
be a part of the group Teen Missions that helps build missionary
compounds.In the fall of 1985 she
attends a Christian college in Upland, Indiana.David, who is now a year behind in his
studies, is sent to the Escuela Caribe in Marion, Indiana, where he will stay
until he is old enough to join the Indiana National Guard. He died on August 1, 1987 in a car crash, on
his way to see Julia, only four miles from the house.

The next 18 years were successful years for
Julia:she earned a BA in Spanish from
Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan and a M.A. in Print Journalism from
University of Southern California, and worked for the Los Angeles Times as well as other prestigious publications.

But her personal life was a mess:- it took her a full -year before she finally
accepted David’s death.

“Shortly after he died, I
transferred to another college, where I told everyone about my hilarious
brother. I kept up this fiction for over a year, then blurted out the truth
during a bout of drinking Peach Schnapps.”

It took her ten years to gather up the
courage and strength to stand over his gravestone in 1997.

In 2001, she began the research process of
turning David’s green notebook into the memoir Jesus Land.

In 2002, she connected with the man, Tim Rose,
who would change her life.They first
connected via a dating site, and then, finally met face to face at a Berkeley,
California café.

Three years later, May 21, 2005, the two married
at San Francisco City Hall, a union that Julia’s mother said she refused to recognize
since they had not married in a church.

This was the last straw and Julia cut off
contact with both her parents, who now live in Florida.

Jesus Landwas published by Counterpoint
Press in the United States on January 1, 2005.

Jesus Land was a New York Times national bestseller,
a Times bestseller in the U.K., and named one of the top ten best memoirs ever
by Entertainment Weekly Magazine.

The book was also the winner of the American
Library Association’s Alex Award in 2006; New Visions Nonfiction Book Award in
2006; and a top selection for the Quality Paperback Book Club.

The book is now being shopped by Hollywood for
possible movie consideration (as well as her other book A Thousand Lives).

“I was surprised that so many people read it, and felt moved
by it.Amazed
and thrilled at the response. It was hard to get published - all the big houses
turned it down. I still get emails several times a week. It blew me away that
people felt touched by David's life and cared about him.”

The most important thing in Julia’s life
is her own family – her husband Tim Rose, a history professor at Berkeley
Community College, and their two daughters – Tessa Rose-Scheeres, 8, and Davia
Rose-Scheeres, 6.

“I choose now to live in Berkeley, California, which is a progressive refuge, despite the fact that I can’t afford to buy a house here.
It’s important to me that my children grow up in a place where everything is
questioned, examined and debated.”

Julia makes sure Tessa and Davia attend schools that are diverse
in both the student makeup and the parent make up.

“They have friends who are
black, Muslim, Latino, Asian—you name it. There is no sense of the “white way
being the right way.” Parents also come in every variety—mixed race marriages,
gay partners, divorced moms. We all love our children and want to do right by
them, and that’s what matters most.

"I only wish my brother David had survived
to experience Berkeley as well. No one would flinch here if we were to walk
down the street together, whereas in Indiana we were constantly met with
hostility. I don’t believe in heaven, but this is about as close to heaven on
earth as I imagine getting.”

It seems only reasonable that Julia
identifies herself as an atheist and a humanist: “The
abuse I witnessed in the name of God made me resent organized religion and
especially Christian fundamentalists. It
made me lose my faith.”

Yet Jesus Land is not a condemnation of
Christianity but rather a condemnation of criminal/abusive behavior disguised
as Christianity. Julia’s own two
sisters Laura and Debra are both devout Christians and she maintains close
relationships with both her sisters and brother Dan.

Jesus Land should never be described as an
anti-Christian book, but a book detailing the dangers of forced religion, the
affects abuse can have on individuals, but most importantly, it is about the
power of love between brother and sister, and how their love conquered and
continues to conquer what fanaticism tried so hard to destroy.

Photograph Description
And Copyright Information

Photo 1

Julia in her home office
in Berkeley, California.

Copyright granted by
Julia Scheeres

Photo 2

Jacket cover for Jesus
Land.

Julia and David on their
last day of Kindergarten

May 1972

Copyright granted by
Julia Scheeres

Photo 3a, 3b, 3c, and 3d

Pages from David’s green
notebook.

Copyright granted by
Julia Scheeres

Photo 4

Julia and David

June 1970

Copyright granted by
Julia Scheeres

Photo 5

Julia and David

Christmas 1986

Copyright granted by
Julia Scheeres

Photo 6

The gate leading to the
Escuela Carib in the Dominican Republic.

Copyright granted by
Julia Scheeres.

Photo 7

Julia and David as the
flower girl and ring bearer at their babysitter’s wedding